JOHANNESBURG– State-owned South African Airways (SAA) says it is pushing ahead and making progress in implementing its turnaround plan to lead the airline to financial sustainability.

Over the past six months, SAA has been on roadshows to meet its major code-share partners and other potential commercial partners to revitalise the commercial delivery under the existing agreements and explore mutually beneficial opportunities to expand the network, the airline said in a statement.

The national flag carrier said network optimization and development is an important part of its turnaround strategy and it embarked on a network and route rationalisation programme in November last year. Part of the programme was the revitalization of all alliances and partnerships, including interline and code-share agreements.

In meetings with other airlines held over the last six months, SAA also discussed the possibility of these airlines taking SAA’s excess cabin and flight deck crew on a contract basis as part of the turnaround strategy implementation.

SAA has met Emirates, Turkish Airways, Qatar Airways, Kenya Airways, Air Mauritius, United Airlines and Singapore Airlines. These discussions have been purely about commercial agreements such as interline, codeshare, cargo as well as possibilities of these airlines taking some of our excess flight deck and cabin crew staff,” it added.

We have not discussed any possibility of them investing in SAA as part of the SEP [strategic equity partner] process.”